


Now I Know Better

by megyal



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: Angst, Jealousy, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-10-25
Updated: 2006-10-25
Packaged: 2017-10-27 04:44:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/291753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/megyal/pseuds/megyal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Title from a Gavin Degraw song.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Now I Know Better

**Author's Note:**

> Title from a Gavin Degraw song.

Pete figured that he should have seen all the signs...if there had been signs to catch. As it was, there was almost no fucking clue, and it was probably that little issue that injured his ego more than anything.

Patrick had pulled one over him and he did it _good_.

He supposed that if he hadn't been so busy with Clan and the label, he could have been sharper on the ball, but that was not really a good enough excuse.  
There were other supposes to consider too: He _supposed_ he should have called when he said he would have. He _supposed_ he could have sent that present on Patrick's birthday and not two days after, but those were neither here nor there. That was all hindsight, or something.

Because, _god_ , Patrick had made an unspoken promise to him, and Pete had been pretty much living on that promise to tide him through those awful meetings with the bands and the agents and the..stuff to do all the time.  
Patrick was supposed to be the rock. The Safe Port in Storm.

And imagine, if Will hadn't dragged him out to that cute little coffee-shop last night, he would have never known. This was the depth at how awesomely good Patrick was at being awesomely bad, and if Pete wasn't currently trying to pump blood back into his mangled heart, he would have been admiring this before-unknown trait.

But he _saw_. Oh god, _somebody_ , put out his eyes out, but he saw. He had been coming out of the shop with a large danish and some fancy cappuchino he thought Patrick might like and he saw. Patrick was coming out of the studio down the road and across the way, where there was almost no light from the streetlamps, his hat perched jauntily on his head, a scarf that Pete didnt know wrapped tightly around his neck; Pete was going to call out his name, raising the coffee and the danish. And then Patrick turned his face back to the entry, saying something quickly to the person who was coming out behind him. It was the person's hand that rested on Patrick's arm that drew Pete up. The way the fingers moved, rolling in sensual circles, pale against Patrick's jacket; and the way Patrick seemed to relax into the touch, his body leaning into the person. Pete nearly dropped the all the stupid shit he had in his hands.

Will was right behind Pete, and he heard his small shocked gasp. Yeah. Somebody managed to shock Beckett. Ten more points for Patrick.

The person Patrick stood with was taller, slimmer, and with strange blonde-black hair, choppy like Pete's, with dark eyes and a darker smile. And then he leaned forward quickly, his hand moving up to grasp Patrick's sweet chin, and he gave Patrick a long soft kiss.

Pete squeezed the danish, and the coffee-cup crushed in his palm, spilling lukewarm cappuchino onto his hand, and he barely felt it. Patrick had stiffened, and then moved away, but he was smiling lightly.

In essence, Pete turned and fled, hearing Will murmuring in alarm behind him. All he could see in his mind's eye was the way the guy had moved his fingers of his other hand into the ends of Patrick's hair, twirling it and stroking the strands.

*

He had let himself into Patrick's apartment, and sat stiffly on the sofa, not wanting to even touch anything there. All he could think about was where in this apartment that guy might have been; if he had seen the picture of Pete and Patrick next to the bedside table; if he knew that Patrick liked Herbal Essence in the shower (mostly because of those orgasmic commercials) and if he realised that Pete's clothes took up nearly half of the closet, even though Pete refused to officially move in.

He wondered if the guy had used his coffee-cup, and if he slept on Pete's side of the bed. He wondered if he carefully watched Patrick's sleeping features, as Pete did, and smiled with simple delight.

His brain was spinning around itself, and it came to a sudden painful halt as Patrick's key jiggled in the lock, and Patrick stepped inside.

"Oh. Hey...I didn't expect you until tomorrow," Patrick said smoothly, and Pete nearly flew up in a rage. But he sat back in the sofa, averting his eyes. There was a long silence.

"What's wrong, Pete?" Patrick asked, and from his careful tone, Pete knew that he was nowhere near as good as Patrick from keeping his face neutral. Still, he made a try.

"Oh...nothing." He pinched a nearby cushion viciously. "So. Where were you?"

"In the studio," Patrick answered, and Pete realised he hadn't moved from the door. It was like he was standing in front of a firing squad and Pete wished for a rifle. Maybe one of those with the sharp blade on the barrel to jab people with.

"Which studio? I checked in on our usual one, and you weren't there. I even stopped on the way here to get you a coffee." He paused, and frowned at the coffee-table. "And a danish."

"I don't like danishes," Patrick said, low, and Pete bit his bottom lip until he almost broke skin.

"Oh, yeah. I forgot that."

"I was with a friend, at another studio," Patrick began again, and Pete rubbed at his eyes. He tried so hard to breathe deeply, but the image of Patrick and his _friend_ rocketed its way up, and the blood pulsed in his ears and he felt like jumping over the table and kicking Patrick.

" _Just_ a friend?"

Patrick's pause lasted a lifetime, and Pete felt exhausted.

"I saw. Okay? I saw, you and...and _him_....oh god, _jesus_ , you little SHIT, I SAW!" And now, he got up and stumbled to Patrick, who held up his hands in a defensive manner. Pete supposed he looked like he was having an apoplectic fit, which, in all fairness, he _was_. Pete slapped him, hard, and Patrick's head snapped to the side with the force of the blow. His hand then flew up to his jaw and his eyes were dark with shock and anger; for a moment, Pete was deeply remorseful. He had hit _Patrick_. Then he remembered the way Patrick had _smiled_ at _him_ , and Pete raised his hand again.

His hand was deflected this time by Patrick's arm, and then he found himself being shoved back. He tripped over the low table, spilling Patrick's magazines and albums, and sprawled on the couch. He jumped back up immediately and Patrick came forward, unafraid, challenging. That was one thing he loved about Patrick. He always gave as good as he got, never backing down, and Pete stopped short, clenching his fingers into the spaces between the heart-line and the brain-line of his palms, where Patrick had once predicted great happiness and love for all of Pete's life.

"How long have you been fucking him?" Pete snapped, shouting slightly over the very tangible cracking of his heart, and Patrick blinked at him, and then glared. He was glaring at Pete, but there was something _else_ in the glare, and Pete latched onto it. He knew what it was. This was the untainted strain of pure guilt and Pete felt like tearing down every fucking wall in this apartment. Preferably with TNT.

"We're _not_ fucking," Patrick said, but it was too deliberate, and Pete went after him again. They went down in punches. This was the first physical fight they had in _years_ , the last epic one being when Patrick was eighteen and they were all feeling peaky from traveling in the van; Patrick had felt that Pete was looking at him _funny_ , and in a strange temperamental fugue, had punched Pete on the nose, not breaking it, but basically instigating a fierce scuffle in a dusty gas-station. Andy had continued to pump gas while Joe supervised the end of _that_ bout.

Now Pete dragged his hands up underneath Patrick's layers of shirts as he straddled him on the floor, wheezing from a sharp blow he got in the ribs, and pinched without mercy, grasping handfuls of pale flesh. Patrick cried out, and pushed at Pete, but he held on, and pulled at the zipper of Patrick's jeans.

"Did you give him _this_?" Pete was saying, but it came out in a desperate scream as he grasped Patrick's cock through the fabric of his boxers. Patrick wasn't at all hard, and he pitched Pete off, and kicked at him, rolling him away along the cold floor as he pulled back up his zipper. They both got to their knees, eyeing each other and gasping, and Patrick got up first. His hat had fallen off, and with an air of injured dignity, he located it and yanked it on.

"You think I slept with Jade," Patrick's words were slow, and Pete's vision went red because he didn't _need_ a name, but now he heard it and that made everything even worse. He got up and moved away, aching all over and within.

"Oh, yeah. I _know_ so."

Patrick went pale, and Pete closed his eyes, holding back the tears.

"The way you were looking at him? That's the way you look at me. Or, _fuck_. How you used to." Pete rubbed at his face and was bitterly pleased with himself that he wasn't sobbing on his knees. He could feel Patrick step closer and he went back, keeping the distance between them.

"We haven't." Patrick said awkwardly, and Pete laughed, weary behind his hands. Patrick kept saying _we_. As if he and that fucker Jade were a unit. "Pete. I couldn't...I didn't let him."

"I don't believe you." Pete's voice was almost gentle. "At least. You weren't fucking him yet. But you would have. Sooner or later, you would have." Pete paused and moved his hands, leaving them to hang at his sides. "Tell me no, Stump. Look me in the eye and tell me that I don't know what I'm saying."

Patrick closed his eyes and breathed shallowly, and Pete walked around him, opening the door.

"Don't call me." His voice was thick, yet cool. "I'll ask Joe to pick up my stuff."

*

 _This is how a heart breaks_ , Pete now thought idly for the sixteenth time on the fourteenth day he'd gone without seeing Patrick's face. Every morning for two weeks straight, he woke up feeling as if his right arm was missing, and then it hit him that, basically, it _was_ and he would lie in bed, hot underneath the covers and desperate for Patrick, and that was the worst truth he had ever realised in his life. Patrick had taken him and broken him down to the lowest common denominator, and if Patrick decided to walk into his bedroom right now, Pete would still do anything to make him stay.

Their label was slightly panicked over Pete's sudden and unusual diffidence to everything, but since they were going through upheaval themselves, there was not really a rush at them for anything new. Not yet. Andy and Joe were surreptitiously getting rid of all the pills and not really understanding what was the cause of the rift, because neither Patrick nor Peter had said anything, and Will had wisely kept his mouth shut (under desperate threats from Pete).

So, here it was. Day in. No Patrick. Day out. No Patrick. If this was the way his whole existence was going to thrum with that incessantly sad chorus, then he really, _really_ was going to have a bad life.

There was a knock on his door, and Andy strolled in holding the black cordless phone that was kept in the living room. He had unplugged the one in this bedroom, not wanting to sleep in his own bed because it smelled so strongly of Patrick's cologne, and he wasn't going to be a fucking baby and cry every four minutes. Every six, maybe; but not every _four_.

"It's your call, Pete," Andy said calmly, his eyes taking in Pete's uncombed hair and overall scruffy appearance. "And no. It's not Patrick."

Pete took the phone and waited until Andy closed the door behind himself, before saying hello. It really _wasn't_ Patrick, but it was no voice he knew, either.

"Peter," the person was saying. "You don't know me. But maybe you know _of_ me. I'm Jade."

Pete gripped the phone tightly and gritted his teeth without even noticing it. Jade waited him out, presuming that Pete would hang up on him, and then continued with an tone of faint surprise.

"I'm not calling to apologise or anything," Jade was saying, and his voice was so fucking chilly; lazy and economical. "Patrick is nothing to be sorry over, let me tell you that."

"You _fucker_ -" Pete started, but Jade cut him off.

"Listen. Give me a fucking minute and then you can go off on your little self-righteous speech." There was a slight pause, and Pete was literally shaking, but he still had the phone to his ear. "I kept asking him, all the time, and he kept saying no. He always said no, even when he was alone in the studio making magic while you were off being the entertainment somewhere. That night? He nearly gave in, and he practically ran out of the studio...and I managed to chase him and get in one kiss."

Pete was doing a good job of not breaking the phone in half, but he bit one hand, put the other below his thigh, and perched the phone between the round of his shoulder and his ear.

"You know what he said? He said thanks for the offer. Really, that kid is very polite. But he figured he had a good thing going on with you, fuck knows _why_ he would say that, but he did, and he left."

Pete was trembling and biting his hand even harder.

"You don't know what you're giving up, Peter." Jade's voice dropped to a murmur, still so collected. "And I'm here hoping that you will give up just a little longer, so he can finally say yes to me. It's just that I prefer knowing that when he's looking at me, he won't see _you_. And he always did. Trust me on this one."

Pete quit biting his hand and simply used it to clench over his mouth. But Jade didn't say anything else, and Pete realised he had hung up only when the stuttering dial-tone came on.

He found himself at Patrick's door two hours later.

*

It really wasn't fair that Patrick would look so normal at first glance, but upon deeper inspection, Pete found slight hollows in his normally round cheeks, faint shadows under his eyes. Pete remained at the door when Patrick stepped back, and they stood staring at each other through the threshold.

Pete cleared his throat, not taking down the hood of his jacket.

"He said you kept saying no," he started in a croak, and Patrick brushed his hands through his hair, and then closed his eyes with a sigh. "But how much longer could you have kept it up?"

"Not much longer," Patrick admitted in a low voice, and Pete felt like he was being tag-teamed, battered without reprieve. "It's...I wanted to. So I ran. I ran back here, and I was glad to see you, because you could make me stronger, but you looked like as if you wanted to kill me."

"I did. When I saw...what I saw, you have no idea how it felt. I didn't know if we can make it work again, not after seeing that. I...fuck, what else could I think?"

Patrick's skin went red, and he stared fixedly at a point over Pete's head. He was nodding slowly to some unheard beat, and then Pete took a tentative step inside Patrick's apartment. Patrick's eyes flicked at him, widening in hopeful surprise, and he shifted almost unconsciously towards Pete.

"The thing is," Pete said, and he felt little more whole just thinking about how good hope felt, and how amazing it was to finally think fucking _positive_ , "You never gave up on me. So here's me not giving up on you. Is that okay?"

"More than." Patrick took a slow step back, and Pete followed. "Can you come inside, Pete? And close the door."

Pete closed the door softly, locking them both in. Locking everything else out.


End file.
